[…] Since the inception of al-Qa’ida, the organization has claimed
to represent Muslim interests around the world declaring itself the
vanguard of true Islam, and the defender of Muslim people.
Unfortunately for al-Qa’ida, their actions speak louder than their
words. The fact is that the vast majority of al-Qa’ida’s victims are
Muslims: the analysis here shows that only 15% of the fatalities
resulting from al-Qa’ida attacks between 2004 and 2008 were
Westerners.
This report [850KB, PDF format – ed.] used Arabic media sources to
study the victim’s of al-Qa’ida’s violence through a non-Western
prism. This allows researchers to avoid accusations of bias
associated with Western news outlets or U.S.-based datasets. […]
All of the sources used in this exercise are available as an appendix
to this report to ensure that other researchers can reproduce these
results.

The results show that non-Westerners are much more likely to be
killed in an al-Qa’ida attack. From 2004 to 2008, only 15% percent of
the 3,010 victims were Western. During the most recent period studied
the numbers skew even further. From 2006 to 2008, only 2% (12 of 661
victims) are from the West, and the remaining 98% are inhabitants of
countries with Muslim majorities. During this period, a person of
non-Western origin was 54 times more likely to die in an al-Qa’ida
attack than an individual from the West. […] Irrespective of
statements made by [al-Qa’ida’s second in command Ayman] Zawahiri and
others, the figures, drawn from exclusively Arabic news sources, show
that the Muslims they claim to protect are much more likely to be the
targets of al-Qa’ida violence than the Western powers they claim to
fight.”